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The modernization process of a transaction goes through a careful evaluation of its specific necessities to know in what kind of technology to invest in and which are the ideal ways to utilize the tools that will be purchased with this investment.

The environmental regulation, before the 60s was practically non existent. From the late 60s and early 70s, among other nations, the United Stated started to demand a context of complex regulations of the kind “command and control “ that today fill in more than 20.000 pages of the Federal Register, not including the state and municipal levels of laws.

In the companies the early focus of the environmental management was in accordance to the regulation. These regulations normally evaluated the pollution control at the end of the processes and responded to the regulation only in cases that they are complex and overlapped, with federal, state and municipal requirements, where the organization has to answer to all of them, even if in some cases there are conflicts among them.

Thus, the companies tended to focus on the demands of each rule alone and neither dedicated much time nor thought about integrating in a unique system the procedures related to the conformity of each norm or law.

What normally happened was to obey the regulations to avoid fines or penalties, generally reacting to the events without trying to prevent them. In this way, the environmental management was done and in many cases still is, in a reactive, fragmented way and focused on putting out fires instead of avoiding the occurrence of problems. For several reasons, the environmental management is now developing to a more systematic approach. Among the pressures for changes that the companies are going through nowadays, here are some of them:

1. Growing costs of the environmental protection;
2. Detailed analyses by financial institutions and investors;
3. From the one way regulations to multiple ways (it searches preventive approaches instead of those focused at the end of the process );
4. From “Command and Control” to market incentives;
5. Globality perception in the environment;
6. Demand for the sustainable development.

The survival of the organizations in the long-term depends on the answer to these pressures.

Besides, the environmental management can represent many benefits to the organizations.

The development of such systems, in a regulated way, depends mainly on an answer to the increasing doubts about the environmental protection, where companies all over the world are developing environmental management programs to avoid problems with infringements, improve the operational efficiencies and have competitive advantages. With this objective, environmental management norms and guidelines arose and were updated in the last years.

Under the increasing world pressure, the organizations worldwide searched for an answer that could be useful to business and contribute for the improvement of the environmental performance as well. So, the certification by the environmental management system norms would confirm the environmental competence of the organization, also contributing for the reduction of risks and accidents and the enforcement of the law related to the activity.

System audit in environmental management:

It is a systematic evaluation to determine if the environmental management system and the environmental performance of an organization are in accordance with its environmental policy and if the system is effectively implanted and appropriate to meet the environmental aims of the organization.

The audit of management system is a management tool, comprising a systematic, documented, periodic and objective evaluation about how the equipments, management and environmental organization are helping to protect the environment. Most of the environment audits are a combination of one or another form of audit. Yet, the main aim of any environmental audit is to provide a diagnosis of the present situation to verify what is lacking and to promote future actions to improve the environmental performance of the environmental evolution of the organization.

The environmental norms deal with the use of natural resources, its transformations, registers and final disposition. The responsibilities go beyond the factory frontiers and start to look after the environment taking into consideration the productive activity.